In Arkansas, we’re continuing to work to ensure children have the health coverage and health care they need. Current efforts include developing the new health law’s Exchange (an insurance marketplace) and advocating to extend Medicaid to parents and other adults. One way AACF and the Finish Line Coalition can help is by building on our past work in outreach and enrollment success for ARKids First. With our help, Arkansans will be able to learn about new health coverage options available in January 2014 from someone within their own community.

We are working to develop an effective outreach program that engages partners statewide in the effort to enroll the half-million uninsured Arkansans, including tens of thousands of children. We are one of the first states to begin developing this program, and we are receiving some national attention for this. If you’d like to learn more, and how you might be able to help, here are a couple opportunities.

• Tomorrow, Thursday Oct. 11, at 12:30, Enroll America will be conducting a webinar highlighting Arkansas’s In-Person Assister program, called IPAs. The IPA program will award contracts to over 500 people on the ground in Arkansas to assist with outreach and enrollment. Here is a link for signing up for the webinar. I hope that you can join the webinar!
• In addition to the webinar, I wrote a blog on In-Person Assistance in Arkansas for Enroll America. The topic is also covered on AACF’s ARVoices Blog.

If you have questions about being involved with developing the IPA program for outreach in Arkansas, please don’t hesitate to contact us. You can direct questions or other emails to astrong@aradvocates